William Easterly

William Russell Easterly (born September 7, 1957) is an American economist specializing in economic development. He is a professor of economics at New York University, joint with Africa House, and co-director of NYU's Development Research Institute. He is a Research Associate of NBER, senior fellow at the Bureau for Research and Economic Analysis of Development (BREAD) of Duke University, and a nonresident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution in Washington DC. Easterly is an associate editor of the Journal of Economic Growth.

Easterly is the author of three books: The Elusive Quest for Growth: Economists’ Adventures and Misadventures in the Tropics (2001); The White Man’s Burden: Why the West’s Efforts to Aid the Rest Have Done So Much Ill and So Little Good (2006), which won the 2008 Hayek Prize; and The Tyranny of Experts: Economists, Dictators, and the Forgotten Rights of the Poor (2014), which was a finalist for the 2015 Hayek Prize.